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Autumn 2014


Four Decades in an Evolving Market


Above 19th century Dutch landscapes, such as Hermanus Koekkoek Snr.’s Evening on the Zuider Zee, 1842, Cider House Galleries, were highly desirable in the 1970s.


ply was not a problem. There were around 5,000 reg- istered dealers in the country, with many other sole traders, runners and increasingly ‘art consultants’. Framers, shippers, restorers and insurance brokers abounded. Street and indoor markets flourished. Con- tainer-loads of furniture were despatched to the Con- tinent, creating a south London dealing hub around the A23. In 1973 the booming trade totalled £125m in imports and £109m in exports, of which antiques ac- counted for £36m and £40m – over 100% up on the previous year.


Thus the need for a trade association with a wider base than the venerable British Antique Dealers’ As- sociation, which excluded post-1830 dealers, and at a meeting of ten people, including two market journal- ists, the London And Provincial Antique Dealers’ As- sociation was born. Two soon left the ranks, but before long membership soared from an initial 108, and the new body was able to take premises across the road from Harrods. It was the first such grouping to tie its members to a code of practice backed by a free concili- ation service; for the last 15 years there have been over 550 members, now including about 50 from overseas. The name was later tailored to keep the acronym but explain its nature.


During the association’s first decade much changed


in the wider world, but some things remained the same: the last and greatest miners’ strike began in


March 1984, and the IRA campaign nearly achieved success with the Brighton bomb. Unrelated terrorist manifestations with more or less distant effects on the art world included the Libyan Embassy siege, which not only discommoded the market’s heartland, but for ten days turned St James’s Square into a seeming Christo. The art world, and almost everyone else, was already feeling the effects of the micro computer revo- lution, and 1984 saw the release of both the Amstrad CPC range and the Apple Mac. One of LAPADA’s first challenges had come in 1975 when, along with its fellows, BADA, the Society of Lon- don Art Dealers and the Antiquarian Booksellers’ As- sociation, it had opposed the imposition of the buyer’s premium by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Trade unity could not be maintained, however, and by the 1980s the hated premium was grudgingly endured. Another great change in the market to begin dur- ing the 1970s was the increasing effectiveness of the trade fairs by which the dealers hoped to make a stand against the rising power of the auction houses. Stately Grosvenor House dated back to 1934, while in Harrogate the Northern Antique Dealers’ Fair had been a genteel fixture since 1951; the Paris Biennale was launched in 1962. They and other international events were hardly innovative. However, there was a new spirit to the first Olympia Fair (actually at Earls Court), which opened in 1973, and a still more signifi-


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